They say imitation is the highest form of flattery, for design agency Metalab it must be difficult to see it that way.
Quite simply, Mozilla’s new design for Jetpack, a platform that lets developers build new and improved add-ons for Firefox, is a complete rip off of Metalab’s own website.
In a post, Metalab outlines how the company had in fact been contacted by Mozilla regarding the project and had even sent in a proposal which Mozilla eventually rejected. Metalab even go so far as to include the estimate:
This isn’t the first time a company who should know better has completely ripped off another site. Microsoft recently launched and then pulled their own new site after it had been proven to be an exact rip off (design and code) of Plurk.
It’s surprising to see this sort of thing from a company like Mozilla who generally receive a great deal of respect within the technology and Internet community. Whether we’ll see Mozilla pull the design and/or issue an apology, we’ll wait and see. Metalab requests you tweet @MozillaNews to let them know “this isn’t ok.”
What I can't believe is seeing some commenters elsewhere almost taking Mozilla's side and calling Andrew's response overblown.
The location of said design is entirely irrelevant. This thing got ripped off and reproduced, and someone else put their stamp on it. Intellectual property is intellectual property, the end.
Mozilla has posted a clarification of what actually happened, and a public apology to MetaLab. The designs in question were not used in a production web site, but were part of early mockups.
http://mozillalabs.com/jetpack/2010/03/10/jetpa…
Well there's an update on that post now, and it seems there was a bit of misunderstanding. That was a dev build, and the guys who put that stuff on the web didn't know that the similarities existed.
I have issues with them demanding an apology, but I'll let it slide…
I do however wish people would tone down the freakout on crap like this until they actually know what happened. Posting angry articles about stuff on the web without all the facts is like flinging poop into a monkey cage…
Context is everything.
Dismissing the location as irrelevant proves that you are being emotional instead of reasoning through the situation